Redesigned Extruder

Earlier this year I experimented with a bowden cable style extruder and got mixed results, I mostly got loads of ooze and constant filament jams. So shortly after my upgrade to MK4 electronics I redesigned my extruder combining what I have learned over the past few designs.Bowden Cable Style Extruder

I love MakerGear Groove Mount hot ends, they almost never fail and are easy to switch out for cleaning or repair. So I used my tried and true groove mount quick change block, you might be thinking "you can't make the groove mount out of ABS, it's gonna melt" well you would be surprised. The mounts hold up just fine and I haven never had one fail due to heat issues, many others have now embraced the printable groove mount.

Redesigned Extruder

I enjoyed the accessibility that I gained from the hinged idler bearing I used in the bowden cable filament drive, it did however have one flaw. One spring was not enough to apply proper tension to the idler bearing so the filament would often skip causing inconsistent extrusion widths. I redesigned the idler to allow for two springs so there would no longer be skipping, if the filament strips now it will be due to a blockage in the nozzle.

Twin Tension Springs

Orientation of the stepper motor was another feature of the bowden cable filament drive that I carried forward, it allows for unrestricted service access of the filament drive making it easier to clean out the gear teeth after a jam or to switch out filament. I plan on using this similar yet mirrored orientation of the stepper motor when I design my dual extruder.

Increased Service Access

I lined the filament path both top and bottom with 2mm ID Teflon tubing, I had noticed that the entry hole to the drive had started to widen due to the incoming filament. The Teflon tubing at the top of the drive will prevent the erosion issues, the Teflon at the bottom will prevent the filament from buckling when entering the hot end, I have cleared many jams that were caused by the filament buckling at the top of the hot end because of too much clearance.Teflon Lined Filament Path

I've been printing with the redesigned extruder for about two weeks and have yet to have a single jam or stripped filament.

Settlers of Catan 3D Game Board

A little over a year ago Thingiverse user Sublime uploaded a complete 3D Settlers of Catan game board, I have been working towards completing my set since the day he released it. I can finally announce that I have completed the set and its ready for game play.

I'm not that happy with how most of the game tiles came out, I still don't have my dimension setting completely ironed out, and most of the tiles were printed when geared extruders on MakerBot electronics were in their infancy. The tiles however are extremely dimensionally accurate, and fit together perfectly. I will probably try and replace a bunch of the tiles with ones of better print quality later.

I filled the number tiles with black puff paint normally used on fabric, it worked perfectly for filling in the deep numbers and was also very easy to clean off parts that I didn't want painted. I also modified the number six tiles by adding an orientation dot, I could have purchased another color of puff paint but didn't think of that till I had already modified the tiles.

I designed an interlocking border based on one designed by Thingiverse user Mraiser my design is lower in profile, matching the height of the sea tiles border, it also has a nice beveled edge.  I plan on creating a varient that has built in pockets for the resource & development cards.

Sometimes Length Matters

I have been meaning to upgrade the electronics on IceBot One to the latest MakerBot Gen 4 for several months now, I wanted to get in on some Volumetric 5D action and set myself up for the addition of the Gen4 Interface.

I had previously decided that it would be a good idea to move the electronics to a more accessible location to make it easier to access the SD card slot. For those who don't know, my machine is a little different than most. IceBot One is a reclaimed CNC, in its former life it was an automated inspection machine for the semiconductor industry. Compared to a Makerbot or RepRap this thing is huge, 4'x4'x6' and tipping the scales at 1,500lbs . Yeah that's pretty big, so it shouldn't be a surprise that when routing cables from one end of the machine to the other a few feet of cable may be needed.

The new Gen4 Motherboard location required about 4 feet of cabling to reach the Gecko Drives that run servo system, as well as the steper drivers located on the z-axis.  I did'nt think the long cables would be an issue since there are plenty of long cables in the system already and I don't have issues with those, but after a few hours of playing around printing calibration cubes it became obvious that something was wrong. Everything I printed came out slanted by a few degrees.

At the same time as the hardware upgrade I also performed an update to ReplicatorG 29 r2 and Skeinforge 49 so it wasn't out of the realm of possibility that the software upgrade was causing the problem.  I performed a continuity check on the cables but that turned out just fine.  I checked to make sure none of the cables ran past anything emitting high frequencies, but there was nothing near the cables.  I started to suspect that the long cables were causing a delay in the step and direction pulses.  If I had access and knowledge I could have probably used an osiliscope to verify that this was the problem but I don't roll like that.  I relocated the Gen4 motherboard to the same location as the old Gen3 motherboard and shortened the cables to about 6".  It should come as no surprise that this solved my issues, now i can get on with calibration and start printing again.

New Website

I decided to bite the bullet and ditch my old website, it hadn't been updated in over 7 years.  This was mostly due to the fact that it was written in Microsoft Frontpage and my multiple attempts to implement a CMS were not very successful; I'm a CAD Jockey not a Code Monkey.

So, after multiple years of hearing such great things I decided to made the switch to squarespace.  I'm slowly figuring out how to make changes to templates and add and remove pages and content so expect to see updates in the coming weeks.

And by popular demand, printers of my own design like IceBot One and my upcoming printer Icebot Two will get their own page with detailed info on the hardware and design.  I will try to make at least one blog post a week, and get the printer pages up by February.

Etsy Shop

Are you interested in purchasing one of my designs printed on my 3D Printer?

Well you are in luck as I have opened up a shop on Etsy, you can get there by going to http://www.etsy.com/shop/MatthewLaBerge.  I am currently selling 3D Printed Kindle Docks in your choice of PLA, but keep your eyes peeled for my Wool Winder.